The Nihonkai evergreen forests form a thin strip along the western, Sea-of-Japan-facing coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island, running roughly from Hamada in the south to Yurihonjo in the north and taking in the offshore Oki Islands and Sado Island. Where primary forest survives, the canopy is dominated by evergreen broad-leaved trees, chiefly Persea thunbergii and the chinquapin Castanopsis cuspidata (locally "shii"), with Camellia japonica ("yabutsubaki") and other broadleaf evergreens filling the understorey. The climate is humid (Koppen Cfa), with warm, wet summers and cool winters whose months stay above freezing, plus fairly even rainfall through the year. Much of the original forest has been cleared for settlement, plantations and secondary woodland, and the ecoregion's flagship species, the Japanese crested ibis, went extinct in the Japanese wild in 1981 before being reintroduced on Sado; portions are protected within Sanin Kaigan and Daisen-Oki national parks. For gardeners, the region is the native home of the camellia Camellia japonica, a familiar temperate ornamental.

At a glance

About the temperate broadleaf & mixed forests biome

Four-season forests of deciduous hardwoods — oak, maple, beech — often mixed with conifers, shaped by warm summers and cold winters. Trees leaf out in spring and color in autumn; the generally fertile soils have made these forests heavily settled and farmed.

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's CHELSA-derived current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

Collections for this ecoregion

Curated multi-plant collections whose members all fit this ecoregion's zone range — no won't-grow members smuggled in. Overall fit class shown per collection is the weakest link across its members.

Related ecoregions